Amazing what a few warm days allow

Last week, after a long stretch of very cold weather, we got about five days with no freezing temperatures. In fact, last Saturday it was over 50 degrees.

That made it a great day to install all of the drains and the distribution lines for the house. The picture below shows a view of the utility room with the half bath behind it.


In the front, on the right, are the hot and cold lines that will be attached to the water manifold like the manifold that was installed in the apartment.

The white pipes in the gravel are drains. The utility room's floor drain is in the foreground. The other rains are for the sink and washing machine in the utility room and, at the back left, the lavatory in the half bath.

Before we can pour the concrete floor there is a lot of work to do. The source water line will come in through the frost footing. Electricity will be run into the utility room and some of the electric circuit lines will run through the floor. Also there will be a pipe to exhaust the range top which will be on a island in the kitchen.

Once all of those are in we can add more gravel, put down the vapor barrier, lay 54 sheets of 2" polystyrene panels and place the radiant heat PEX lines.

I hope we can have all that done about the same time the weather allows us to get the concrete pump and concrete truks back onto the site. Right now it's just too muddy.

It's been cold

We left home on Christmas day for a trip to Delaware, North Carolina and Florida visiting family. It's nice to go away while the days are shortest. By the time we got home, the growing length of the day was noticeably different than from when we left.

It was cold for most of the trip, and especially cold for the folks in Florida who are not used to freezing temperatures. On one day it was colder in Florida than here at home.

It was clear, though, as demonstrated by the picture below, that it wasn't warmer here very much.

These tracks on our largest pond were made by deer, dogs and one rabbit.